The Healthiest Diet on the Planet: Why the Foods You Love - Pizza, Pancakes, Potatoes, Pasta, and More - Are the Solution to Preventing Disease and Looking and Feeling Your Best

Ikhtisar

The bestselling author and internationally celebrated physician and expert on nutrition offers an appealing, approachable health solution—eat the foods you love to lose weight and get healthy.

For years, we’ve been told that a healthy diet is heavy on meat, poultry, and fish, and avoids carbohydrates, particularly foods high in starch—empty calories harmful to our bodies.

But what if everything we’ve heard was backwards?

High in calories and cholesterol, animal fats and proteins too often leave you hungry and lead to overeating and weight gain. They are often the root causes of a host of avoidable health problems—from indigestion, ulcers, and constipation to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. On the other hand, complex carbohydrates like whole grains, legumes, tubers, and other starches provide your body with essential proteins and nutrients that satisfy the appetite while simultaneously fighting illness. But Americans eat far too few calories from carbohydrates—only about forty percent, according to Dr. John McDougall, internationally renowned expert on nutrition and health, featured on the documentary Forks Over Knives.

The Healthiest Diet on the Planet helps us reclaim our health by enjoying nutritious starches, vegetables, and fruits. McDougall takes on the propaganda machines pushing dangerous, high-fat fad diets and cuts through the smoke and mirrors of the diet industry. He offers a clear, proven guide to what we should and shouldn’t eat to prevent disease, slow the aging process, improve our physical fitness, be kind to the environment, and be our most attractive selves.

Featuring two dozen color photos and mouth-watering, easy-to-follow recipes for buckwheat pancakes, breakfast tortillas, baked potato skins, rainbow risotto, red lentil soup, green enchiladas, dairy-free lasagna and pizza, and more, The Healthiest Diet on the Planet will help you look great, feel better, and forever change the way you think about health and nutrition.

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The Healthiest Diet on the Planet - Dr. John McDougall

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1

There Are Lies and Damned Lies

Damned lies harm the public and planet Earth. In June 2015, the Journal of the American Medical Association, in a reckless opinion piece, called for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to remove an upper limit on the intake of total dietary fat in its most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015−2020.¹ To my dismay, the authors of this article also applauded the elimination of dietary cholesterol as a ‘nutrient of concern.’

The facts behind the journal’s article are deeply flawed and grossly and irresponsibly skewed in favor of the meat, poultry, dairy, fish, and egg industries, public enemies when it comes to our health. For most Americans, these animal-derived foods are the primary sources of cholesterol and fat. The next largest source of dietary fat is vegetable oil (such as canola, coconut, corn, flaxseed, olive, and safflower). Although the human body does require fat, especially during times of extreme food shortage, plants provide all of the essential fats we need. Removing an upper limit on fat intake promotes obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and common cancers (breast, colon, and prostate). Furthermore, regardless of its source, the fat you eat is the fat you wear. So-called good fat like olive oil is no more attractively worn around people’s waistlines than bad fat from lard.

Lying about our dietary needs is inexcusable. Rather than encouraging the consumption of animal products and vegetable oils, as the authors of this opinion piece suggest, the USDA and the DHHS need to classify these foods as toxic, and the federal government needs to regulate the production, marketing, and selling of these foods in the same way it regulates tobacco and alcohol. Seven decades of personal and professional experience have taught me that these foods will kill you, slowly and surely.

The Problem: Improvements in Our Diet

During most of human existence, the average life expectancy was an astonishing twenty-five years or less. To date, no prehistoric remains have been found of people older than fifty years.² With few exceptions, war, accidents, starvation, or infection ended lives before any telltale signs of aging—graying of the hair, wrinkling of the skin, memory loss, a reduction of strength and loss of muscle mass, and decreased visual acuity—appeared. With the development of civilization, however, people learned to master their environment and to better protect themselves; with these advances some people survived to a ripe old age. Passages from the Bible, written more than twenty-five hundred years ago, report that death from old age typically occurred between seventy and eighty (Psalm 90:10), while other passages predict a maximum life-span of 120 years (Genesis 6:3).

In the nineteenth century, the introduction of immunizations, better nutrition, proper sanitation, and possibly antibiotics resulted in an unprecedented boost in life-span. Life expectancy has increased since the beginning of the twentieth century from age forty-seven to the current seventy-nine years by effectively stopping infectious diseases that killed people from birth to young adulthood.⁴ At the same time, nutrient-deficiency diseases that were once considered life-threatening, like scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, and goiters, have been reduced through public nutritional advice focused on eating more fruits and vegetables (and secondarily on taking vitamin and mineral supplements).

The History of Average Life-Spans (in Years)³

By the middle of the twentieth century, it seemed we were well on our way to enjoying a lifetime of sustainable good health and remarkable longevity. But it didn’t turn out that way. Not even close. Because chronic and degenerative diseases like obesity, heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and cancers quickly replaced nutritional deficiencies and infectious diseases as the predominant causes of disability and death in the country.

How did this happen? What changed? How did we go from achieving the healthiest and longest life-span in the history of humankind to suddenly becoming chronically sick and in constant danger of dropping dead before reaching our golden years?

The Food Industries and the McGovern Report

Jumping on the national health bandwagon, the food industries started pushing meat, poultry, fish, and eggs as invaluable sources of protein, and dairy foods as essential for our calcium needs, which, both the meat and dairy industries claimed, were cornerstones of a healthy diet, even though protein and calcium deficiencies were nonexistent problems (except during starvation, and then all nutrients are deficient).⁵ The meat and dairy industries were so successful at hawking protein and calcium in the first half of the twentieth century that, by the 1960s, the average consumer was convinced—absolutely certain—that protein and calcium were the most vital of all nutrients for a healthy body and a long life, despite the absence of any scientific or nutritional research to support such a claim. In fact, the research at the time was beginning to link chronic and acute diseases with the excessive consumption of meat and dairy, specifically the outrageously high concentrations of saturated fat and cholesterol, and the absence of dietary fiber, essential vitamins and minerals, and other plant-derived nutrients. It is no accident that the death rate for coronary heart disease in the United States rose steadily during this period, reaching a peak in 1968 (238.5 people per 100,000 population).⁶ It was not uncommon for Americans during the mid-twentieth century to die from heart attacks in their fifties and sixties.

At the same time, pockets of the country were suffering from hunger and malnutrition, most notably in the rural South, where emaciated children were testing positive for diseases that had only existed in underdeveloped countries. Recognizing this downturn in America’s health, the U.S. Senate took formal action. Between 1968 and 1977, the Senate convened on numerous occasions its Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, which ultimately produced the country’s first Dietary Goals for the United States, then known as the McGovern Report, in recognition of George McGovern, the Democratic senator from South Dakota and chair of the committee.⁷ These new guidelines on eating were expected to have health-changing effects similar to the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, which helped reduce the prevalence of smoking cigarettes from 50 percent of the adult population in the 1970s to less than 20 percent today.⁸

Although it initially focused on hunger and malnutrition, the committee expanded its scope to include all aspects of nutrition, from eating too little to eating too much. In doing so, the committee took on obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain kinds of cancer. There is a great deal of evidence and it continues to accumulate, which strongly implicates and, in some instances, proves that the major causes of death and disability in the United States are related to the diet we eat, wrote Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, of the Harvard School of Public Health, in the McGovern Report. I include coronary artery disease, which accounts for nearly half the deaths in the United States, several of the most important forms of cancer, hypertension, diabetes and obesity as well as other chronic diseases.⁹

Through its findings, the committee urged the American public to cut back on fat, cholesterol, simple sugars, and refined and processed grains in favor of complex carbohydrates (which were once commonly known as starches), rich in dietary fiber. In lay terms, the committee told people to stop eating so much meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products and to start eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

The question to be asked, according to the McGovern Report, is not why should we change our diet, but why not? What are the risks associated with eating less meat, less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, less sugar, less salt, and more fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fat, and cereal products—especially whole-grain cereals? There are none that can be identified, and important benefits can be expected.¹⁰

The McGovern Report set forth a clear plan for Americans to increase their intake of fruits; starches such as whole grains, legumes, and root vegetables; nonstarchy vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans; and leafy greens like kale and lettuce. In addition to salt and simple sugars, the report suggested Americans reduce saturated fats, most notably meat, poultry, milk, butter, and cheese. It also stressed the urgency to act: Ischemic heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension are the diseases that kill us. They are epidemic in our population. We cannot afford to temporize. We have an obligation to inform the public of the current state of knowledge and to assist the public in making the correct food choices. To do less is to avoid our responsibility.¹¹

After 1968, death rates from heart disease decreased steadily, at an average rate of 3 percent per year, a direct result to the American public’s change in diet and the country’s seemingly mass smoking cessation.¹²

The truth was out, and I believed at that time that the United States and the world were on an unstoppable course to better health. Obviously, I was wrong, because the food industries went ballistic. Big Food was not going to repeat Big Tobacco’s fate. A few months after the release of the McGovern Report, the beef and dairy businesses pushed back at a second Senate hearing, which resulted in a watered-down version of the Dietary Goals, with less emphasis on reducing meat and dairy products. The American Medical Association (AMA) also protested the McGovern Report, because it said that providing this basic knowledge on what we should eat might interfere with the medical doctor’s right to prescribe, even though doctors then, as now, know essentially nothing about human nutrition.¹³

Even with this strong backlash from the industry, the effects of the McGovern Report were widespread and influential. In 1988, C. Everett Koop issued The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, which, in echoing the McGovern Report, recommended a major increase in whole grains, vegetables, and fruits in our diet and an economy-shifting reduction in the consumption of meat and dairy products. As a result, the consumption of meat, milk products, and eggs did fall, albeit temporarily.

But these industries continued to fight back with every means at their disposal, including hiring lobbyists; purchasing medical and nutrition experts; launching huge advertising campaigns; educating schoolteachers, dietitians, medical doctors, and scientists; holding conferences for these professionals with speakers who favored, in return for big dollars, their products; hiring top-notch public-relation firms; and funding nutrition research supporting their sickening and fattening foods. The industries today essentially own the scientific studies, the journals they are published in, and the media to advertise their products.

Their success can be measured by the U.S. food availability data, which documents an increase in mean daily total energy intake, which jumped from 2,057 kilocalories in 1970 to 2,405 in 1990, 2,674 in 2008, and 3,770 in 2014.¹⁴ We consume almost twice as much sugar, meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and seafood today than we did in 1977, when the McGovern Report was issued. And it is no accident that the percentage of people suffering from overweight and obesity has doubled, and type 2 diabetes has more than tripled, during this same period.¹⁵

I have been in the general practice of medicine for nearly a half a century, thirty-nine years of which have been as a board-certified internist. Most of my practice has been focused on treating dietary diseases. Coupled with my experiences, national statistics tell me that nearly 70 percent of the population is overweight, with a staggering 38 percent now categorized as obese.¹⁶ What’s more, prediabetes affects half of our population, while 14 percent of the population has a high enough blood-sugar level to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.¹⁷ By 2030, according to current projections, 44 percent of Americans will be obese—not overweight or heavy, but obese.¹⁸ These figures are shocking, undeniable evidence that Big Food is still winning, while the men, women, and children of the United States are literally becoming casualties of the industries’ unimpeded success.

The Current Dietary Guidelines

In addition to minimizing the dangers of cholesterol, the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015−2020 went out of its way to tell average Americans to pack as many nutrients, especially from meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and fish, into their daily diet as possible, a laughable suggestion because Americans do not have nutrient-deficiency problems.¹⁹

If Americans don’t have nutrient deficiencies, you may ask, then what are the problems? Simply put, Americans are suffering from overnutrition: they are overloaded with cholesterol, fat, protein, and calcium—from animal foods and vegetable oils, which the USDA so aggressively recommends as part of its dietary guidelines. Even when it’s trying to help the American